New Year’s pickin’ stories and more

If it wasn’t for the neighbors setting off fireworks and driving my dog crazy, I would have slept right through the turn of the year. I was getting up early the next morning anyway as I planned on going to the 28th anniversary of Racine’s New Years Day Auction. I didn’t know that one could assemble that many sober people in one spot at 8 in the morning on January 1st.

Racine’s is a pretty big place with one side dedicated to the more hoity-toity items – and chairs. Me, I was hunkered down with the common people–standing room (barely) only. Their site showed some early pulp magazines–you know, the ones with the great sci-fi covers, but I never found them. But, after only 20 minutes there, one of the helpers was holding them aloft. I was too far away to see their condition well, so dropped out when the bidding got fairly high. That was why I went there and could have left with the whole day left, but nooo.

Finally, my stuff, but, he made it the “rest of the table”! There were also dozens and dozens of large holiday stickers, a number of fairly large stuffed rabbit dolls and a bench, a limoges plate, a file box, and other stuff, in addition to the 5 pieces of art work. I got everything for $12.50. There were 2 pieces of ICP from Chaos Comics and 3 pieces from Valiant Comics – one by Sean Chen, one by local favorite Bob Layton and one by Dick Giordano! Oh, yeah, I’m sorry, for those of you out of the loop, ICP stands for Insane Clown Posse. Now, I don’t know much about original comic book art, but each piece is unique and takes the artist quite a bit of time, so I guessed at a value and threw them up on eBay. All 5 were sold in less than a week! And, at a nice little profit, I might add. Now that’s “pickin”.

The previous day, I wasted time and gas going to an auction in lower Delaware that stated there were going to be “over 1,000″ comic books. The site didn’t offer any pictures, but I wasn’t doing anything special and made the trip. An hour and a half later, I find the auction house and the comics were spread out on a table. Maybe, MAYBE, 400 issues and not a single one was a current ongoing title. This wasn’t even worth the time to hang around and see what they would go for.

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